Twentieth-Century British and Irish Studies
The English department at Notre Dame is home to a large and excellent faculty devoted to the study of twentieth-century British and Irish Literature and Culture.
With strong ties to the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, as well as the Modern Poetry and Poetics Group, the Program in Gender Studies, and an active interdisciplinary group of faculty devoted to performance issues, the twentieth-century British and Irish Area fosters an environment for interdisciplinary and collaborative work in a number of fields: Irish Studies, postcolonial theory, literature and politics, modernism and modernity, gender studies, and modern and postmodern poetry and poetics.
Current and recent faculty research projects suggest the wide range of approaches and interests brought to all aspects of modern and postmodern culture: these projects include studies of key figures such as Antonio Gramsci, Stevie Smith, and Elizabeth Bowen, and investigations of literary and cultural phenomenon such as the Gaelic gothic, the gendering of ideas of nation in the Irish theater, and the significance of partition.
A dynamic area seminar brings together faculty and graduate students to present current research: recent papers have included studies of Mass-Observation and everyday life, of intimacy and modernity, of Joyce and mirrors, and of postmodern poetics. Notre Dame's Hesburgh library holdings in Irish literature, modern poetry, and contemporary fiction are especially strong.